Page 9 of The First Hunt (The Final Hunt)

HOLLY

T he faint scent of rain lingered in the air, mingling with the metallic tang of nearby traffic as Holly burst through the heavy double doors into the courthouse lobby.

Footsteps slapped against marble and voices blurred together in a steady hum as she rushed through the crowd to the elevator.

She clutched her notebook, fingers drumming against the worn cover.

It had become her habit as a reporter to take it everywhere, so she’d never miss an opportunity to take down something that could be important.

She couldn’t keep the grin off her face as she mentally replayed the phone call less than an hour ago from her literary agent.

She’d gotten the deal. A book deal. The words pulsed in her mind, quick and electric, as if they’d slip away if she didn’t keep moving, keep breathing, keep herself from shouting it out right there in the lunchtime swarm.

Her advance was enough to replace one year of her salary at the Tribune, and she planned to give her notice so she could put all her energy into turning in the best book possible by her deadline with the publisher.

After hitting the button for the elevator, she tapped her foot against the stone floor. The doors opened. People filed out, and Holly stepped forward, bumping into someone on her left. She turned, seeing it was only a boy. He was older than her nephew she’d never met, probably closer to ten.

“Sorry,” she said, smiling down at him when he met her gaze.

He peered up at her with large brown eyes, but he didn’t smile back. Warmth moved up her chest, pooling in her throat as she thought of Meg’s son. Tanner. That probably wasn’t his name, but she liked to think it was and that Meg had gotten what was likely her final wish.

“Come on, son,” a male voice called from behind her. The boy hurried after his father.

Holly slipped inside the elevator before the doors closed and tried to force the boy from her mind.

If she saw Tanner in every boy she encountered, she would go crazy.

She pressed the button for the fourth floor and lifted her head toward the ceiling as it ascended, still blown away that she was going to have her name on a true crime book published by a major New York publisher.

There’d been a time when getting a book deal like this would’ve been all she’d ever wanted.

Now she saw it as a means to an end. Her true crime book would build a readership, amplifying her platform to raise awareness and pursue justice for Meg’s murder.

Just the thought of catching the guy who killed her sister caused a spark of excitement inside her.

After getting off on the fourth floor, Holly pushed open the heavy door to the Major Crimes Unit. The unit’s gray-haired secretary looked up from behind the front desk and smiled.

“Hi, Dear.”

“Hi, Colleen. Is Jared here?”

Before Colleen had a chance to answer, Jared’s voice boomed from behind the closed door to the office he shared with his partner across the hall.

“ I don’t care, dammit,” Jared shouted.

Colleen warily followed Holly’s gaze.

“You should’ve held him back longer,” Jared continued, his angry tone permeating through the wall. “I don’t buy the alibi. If you’d just given me a little longer with the kid, I could’ve gotten him to talk.”

Colleen returned her attention to Holly. “I don’t think I should interrupt him right now. You okay to wait a few minutes, Hun?”

Holly forced a smile, wondering what Jared was so pissed about. “Sure.” She sank into a folding chair against the wall as another male voice sounded from the other room.

“If we were holding the kid against his dad’s will, any statement you got from him wouldn’t be admissible.”

It was Andy.

“We weren’t charging him with anything,” Andy continued. “You know I couldn’t legally keep him away from his kid any longer. I kept him occupied for as long as I could.”

“That’s bullshit,” Jared said.

Colleen’s eyes met Holly’s for an awkward moment before she looked away, making herself busy by rearranging an already neat stack of papers on her desk.

“He agreed to take a polygraph,” Andy said. “What more do you want?”

“We shouldn’t have let him leave. Now he’s got time to get his story straight before he takes the lie detector test.”

“You know there’s nothing I can do about that.”

“That’s a load of crap.”

The door flew open, and Jared marched out of the room.

His jaw was set in a hard line, and there was an intense, piercing look in his eyes even though he wasn’t looking at Holly.

His narrowed gaze was set on the unit’s main door.

He strode right past Holly without so much as looking in her direction, slinging on his suit jacket as he stormed out of the unit.

Holly spotted Colleen gawking at the door before the secretary looked away, attempting to appear reabsorbed in her busywork at her desk. Holly got up and moved across the hall to the open office doorway. Inside, she found Andy leaning back in his chair with both hands on his white head of hair.

“Hi, Detective. Can I come in?”

“Oh. Hi, Holly.” He heaved an audible sigh and sat forward, leaning his elbows on the desk. “Jared’s not here. He just left.”

“I saw.”

Jared’s desk sat snug against Andy’s, cluttered with papers while Andy’s was neatly organized.

She sank into Jared’s empty swivel chair, trying to read Andy’s expression. “What was he so upset about?”

“Well, you know Jared. It doesn’t take much to get him riled up sometimes.” He studied her for a moment, as if debating how much to say.

Holly thought of Meg and her still-at-large-killer while she tried to piece together what she’d overheard. Her chest wall stiffened. “Was it about the Green River Killer?”

Andy hesitated, and she berated herself for getting her own hopes up.

It couldn’t be, she thought. Like Meg’s murder, the killings attributed to the Green River Killer had gone cold almost as soon as detectives had found their bodies.

The Green River Killer task force hadn’t had a serious suspect since last summer when Gary Ridgway had passed that polygraph with flying colors.

Harris exhaled through his mouth. “Off the record.” He paused, holding Holly’s gaze.

She straightened, nodding. “Off the record.”

“Yes, it was.”

Holly felt her eyes widen as excitement buzzed just beneath her skin.

“Jared caught a man and his son walking around the woods by Star Lake earlier today.”

Holly stilled. The older guy Meg was seeing also had a son. She swallowed. “Where the last Green River Killer victim was found.”

“That’s right. And he drove a blue Ford Fairmont, just like the car another prostitute saw Sally Hickman get into on Christmas Day.”

And Meg, Holly thought. Her heart thumped against her chest as she watched Andy pull out a smoke, wondering how she could keep him talking.

He extended the pack to Holly. She shook her head. “I quit.”

Andy held it in the side of his mouth while he withdrew a lighter from another pocket. “Good for you.”

Holly tapped her foot against the floor, the seconds it took him to light his cigarette feeling like an hour. What if they’ve finally found him?

Holly sat forward. “The older guy Meg was seeing also had a son. Remember what Meg’s roommate said?

” Like she’d promised, Callie had spoken with Andy, telling him everything she’d told Holly.

But Holly had been disappointed Andy hadn’t let Callie give his description to their sketch artist since there was no actual proof he was involved in Meg’s death.

Andy put up a hand. “I remember. But lots of people have sons and own blue cars, Holly, including me. That doesn’t make him the same guy.”

“Does the suspect you interviewed have a mustache?”

Andy shook his head. “No.”

“Brown hair?”

“Listen.” Andy returned the lighter to his pocket.

“He gave us an alibi for when several of the Green River Killer victims went missing, including three of the victims found in the Green River the summer of ’82.

We still need to confirm his alibis, but he agreed to come back later today to take a polygraph. ”

Holly’s brows knitted together in confusion. “Coming back? You didn’t arrest him?”

Andy turned his head away from her to blow out a long drag of smoke. “We couldn’t. We have no hard evidence it was him. And he wanted to take his son home first.”

That must’ve been what made Jared so mad. “When is he coming back to take the polygraph?”

Andy checked his watch and took another drag. “In two hours. However, if his alibis check out, he can’t be our guy.”

“What about Sally Hickman? Does he have an alibi for her murder?”

“It’s not as solid, but he said he was at home watching TV with his son.”

Holly caught a whiff of nicotine-laced smoke and resisted the craving for a long-familiar buzz. Instead, she pulled a stick of gum from her purse and folded it into her mouth, letting the minty flavor distract her from the urge.

“How long will it take?”

“The polygraph? Depends. If he’s telling the truth, probably not more than an hour.”

A surge of energy coursed through her veins. What if it’s him?

Andy looked her over, seeming to register the gleam of hope in her eyes.

He gestured toward her, the cigarette smoking between his index and middle fingers. “Do not release any of this yet to the public, understand? He’s cooperating, and we need to keep it that way. Plus, he might be innocent. But we’ll know more after he takes the polygraph.”

“What’s his name? Does he go by Bobby, Lou, or Denny?”

Andy shook his head. “Holly…you know I can’t give you that yet.”

She sighed. It was worth a shot. “How long ago was he here?” Looking toward the interview room on the other side of the hall, she shivered at the possibility of the Green River Killer—and Meg’s killer—being so close to where she was sitting right now.

Andy stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on his desk, leaving behind a faint spiral of smoke.

“Will you ask him about Meg?”

Andy cocked his head, giving her a look that said we’ve talked about this before . “Your sister is not a presumed Green River Killer victim. She wasn’t a prostitute, and she was murdered nearly two years before his first victims were found in the Green River.”

Meg was his first, Holly wanted to scream . “But what if Meg’s death is related?”

A soft knock sounded on the opened door to Andy’s office. Holly turned to see Colleen in the doorway.

“Sorry to interrupt, Detective. But the polygraph examiner is here, and he wants to know where you want him to set up.”

Andy stood. “I’ll show him.”

Holly followed him out of his office. “Will you call me after it’s done?”

He turned when he reached the hall. “I’ll try, depending on how it goes.”

Holly made her way to the elevator, her body on autopilot, mind whirling with the possibility of Meg’s killer being captured later that day. She wished Andy had given her his name. The elevator doors opened on the first floor as her thoughts went wild trying to envision what he looked like.

Holly stepped off, remembering the boy who’d made her think of her nephew, the one she’d bumped into on her way up.

Andy said the suspect had been with his son.

Picturing the boy’s face, Holly recalled the witness who’d seen Sally Hickman get into a blue car with a boy in the backseat.

She closed her eyes, replaying the voice of the boy’s father, wishing she’d turned around to look at him.

The skin on her arms prickled as the people moving through the busy courthouse lobby seemed to fall away. Holly froze, unaware of the elevator doors closing behind her. The lobby, full of subtle noises and movement, now felt unnaturally still, like a paused photograph.

In this very spot, she had been standing only a few feet from the man who could be the most prolific serial killer in American history. The man who might have killed her sister.